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Friday, August 31, 2012

Here's an apple card for this week's back-to-school challenge at CASual Fridays:

As Jenny mentioned, I've never sent a back-to-school card (although maybe that would make my 3rd grader a little less sad about the prospect of his fun-filled, lazy, summer days coming to an abrupt end) so I used a classic school icon instead. The apple.

The outside shows the whole apple (patterned with a Martha Stewart stamp) with just a "love you" on the leaf. When you lift the flap you see the inside of the apple and the rest of the message.

Glossy accents are on the black seeds (the glossy accents on the right seed kind of collapsed when drying, so I guess that one is a dried seed!)

This tweed is die cut with the Favor It 1 die. I cut off the die cut handles, notched them at the base, and substituted real leather straps. The sewing was a little challenging for me, but let's just say as the author of this blog post I reserve the right to only show you the better side : ) A metal monogram is an easy way to personalize it for a gift.

Also, if you are using this for a gift idea, take advantage of the 3D pocket area. It's the perfect place to fill with money. Roll the money using a bamboo skewer for something a little different.

If you are using this for a 30th birthday present you can roll 30 one dollar bills. The same works for a 20th, 40th, etc. birthday.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Hope you all are enjoying the last weeks before school starts! If you get a chance, I'd love for you to stop by Inspired By Family and check out my article on making multiple cards with one stamp. I picked up this sock monkey stamp set at a garage sale and had fun playing with it.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Here are a few more cards inspired by the super-cool typewriter from the Tuesday Trigger.

I know, there are no typewriters to be found on these cards. The inspiration is from the colored keys. I was thinking, "what part of an image do I have that is always, without a second thought, colored black so I can substitute colors?" Numbers on a traditional pocket watch!

I carefully inked each number with an ink pad, except I was able to use a stamp marker for the yellow numbers. Then die cut a thick acrylic circle (from Cricut Cartridge packaging) to put on top of the clock face. I wanted something with a shine, and initially used dimensional glaze. Yuck!! It turned the colored numbers into a soupy mess. I'm embarrassed to even show a picture of that.

This card is for our dear niece, so I put a gem brad in the middle, and used the fancy watch hands. Notice they are pointing to 7:00 ... she's turning 7. Of course you could do this for any age, up to 12 years old.

This card is for our handsome nephew. Also turning 7 years old. Instead of messing around with the numbers which are supposed to be black, I took what is supposed to be white, and added color to that.

The normally white watch face has ink sponged around in a circle like the tie dye technique that was featured at PTI Stamp-A-Faire. Since this is for our nephew, I didn't want to use the fancy watch hands, so I drew plain, straight ones. A screw brad holds everything down in the middle.

Holy smokes, this is such a cool typewriter in the Tuesday Trigger challenge at the Moxie Fab World! I saw a 1930's typewriter on etsy like this and apparently the keys are colored to help with finger placement. I'd rather think that they made it like this just for fun!

The photo inspired me to play around with the theme of "creativity" and the kind of out-of-the-box thinking someone had to make the keys in a color other than black. In my head I had a picture of a blank typewriter page with flourishes and doodles coming out from behind it to symbolize the endless possibilities that await that page, or really any project, right before you start.

It turned out pretty close to what I pictured. Ideally I'd like to have the quote centered under the typewriter on the white cardstock, but I ran out of real estate. That's OK. Three rhinestones are on the keyboard, radiating more creative energy.

There are several inspirational quotes that I love, and I couldn't pick just one, so I figured a set would be fun to make. It was fun to play around with the different doodle stamps. You could make 20 of these and they'd all be unique.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

I recently found this stamp at the bottom of a box. I thought it was a frog when I bought it a decade ago rummaging through a pile of unmounted rubber stamps, but after stamping it for the first time I'm fairly sure it's an ostrich. Yes?

This ostrich was IN OUR CAR while at a drive-thru wildlife park in Texas. Looks pretty similar.

Regardless, it's ugly, and a little disturbing. I fell in love with the cat Mandi stamped in a quirky blue for the Less is More challenge to use

Dawn McVey has a great tutorial on watercoloring with your ink pads. I wanted to play, but don't have great, open stamp image to play with. So I picked a scrap piece of embossed circles paper on my desk and tried it out.

I liked how it turned out, so I adhered the scrap to a base, stamped a sentiment, and called it a night. I love quick projects!

I loved making paper airplanes as a kid (and decorating them!) and as I was thinking about the CAS-ual Fridays challenge to feature things you'd see in the sky, I thought it would be fun to make a paper airplane again. Only a mini one this time. Add a riddled sentiment and you've got a birthday card for just about anyone.

The roof's edge is cut longer so when it's resting it takes the shape of a roof.

Then when you open it, you get the answer to the riddle. Hahaha. The answer is suspended with thread so it hangs vertically as you open the roof. I made wide fringe for the roof tiles, snipped the corners for a little dimension, and used the woodgrain impression plate.

Friday, August 3, 2012

I'm not thrilled that I lost momentum on Project Life (only complete through mid-February) and Month In Photos (again, stopped after February). But since the Month In Photos project is relatively quick to complete, I decided to pick it up again this month. Glad I did.

Here are the highlights:

- watching the moon rise over Lake Michigan while waiting for fireworks and playing in the sand at Summerfest (so relaxing, except for the police helicopter with the roving searchlight),

- over-the-moon excited to be at the Craft and Hobby Association trade show for the first time,

- happy that the boys still play with each other, and are into simple things like playing dress up,

- spending hours in the sand pit at the pool, and meeting friends while working on a common project, like digging a river that ends at my feet for a spa. Or burying someone in the sand.

- loving our routine of doing swim lessons, eating at Wendy's (20 nuggets with ranch, a large fry, and a crispy chicken Cesar wrap is $8.92), and relaxing at the pool the rest of the day with friends.

- RAINBOW ICE CREAM! a Taste of Chicago favorite. Jackson doesn't drip all over his shirt this year!

- treating the kids to ice cream on the beach after hanging out in Lincoln Park all day with friends. our order was large enough that we had to figure out the total and change for the ice cream guy.

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Rebecca at Simple as That has posted a free template for you to create your own Month in Photos and is hosting a link party for everyone to share their progress.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Well I did make it into the laundry room this week ... to grab some bleach for some good, clean card making! Nichole shared a technique to stamp with bleach and then stamp with ink on top.

Chrissie and Mandi may get sick of seeing me, but it's their fault for having such a versatile sketch for us to use this week! This time I at least flipped it over.

I'm short on larger solid stamps, so I turned to Mehndi Medallion to try this technique out. Since I'm only using one stamp for this, I needed to over-saturate this finely detailed stamp with bleach so it bleeds on the paper. This way when I stamp again with orange ink, there will be a larger white area underneath acting as an outline for all the detail.

The third time I stamped the medallion is in raspberry on the card base. I intentionally rotated the raspberry medallion so it didn't line up with the bleached/orange medallion. When they lined up it seemed to blend in too much.

Interesting to note that when I bleached the PTI raspberry paper it didn't turn color at all. So I grabbed a cheap, thin raspberry paper and the bleach immediately turned the paper to white.